


Happy Thoughts

by Badwolf36



Category: Kingdom Hearts, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Kingdom Hearts, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nogitsune Trauma, Post-Nogitsune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:48:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek just wants Stiles to be happy again after the Nogitsune used his body to cut a swath of destruction through the worlds. Neverland seemed like the perfect place to make that happen. Until Derek remembered that you need a happy thought to fly. And Stiles doesn't have a lot of happy thoughts right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Thoughts

**Title:** Happy Thoughts  
**Fandom:** Teen Wolf  
**Rating:** PG  
**Characters:** Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski, Tinker Bell  
**Word count:** 3,509  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own Teen Wolf, Kingdom Hearts or any related properties.  
**Warnings:** Spoilers for most of 3B.  
**Inspiration:** At one point, someone on [The Sterek Library](http://theofficialstereklibrary.tumblr.com) asked if they had any "Kingdom Hearts" fic. There weren't any, so this fic was sort of born out of that. **  
**

 

**************

Like all of Derek’s plans, this one started out as a great idea, and then promptly crashed and burned as the fatal flaw he failed to recognize in it made itself apparent.

It started out as a way to get Stiles moving again. He hadn’t been the same since he, Scott, and Allison had visited the Nemeton, the heart of the tree that all the worlds had bloomed from. The experience had changed them all, but Stiles had taken it the worst.

Where Allison had hallucinated Kate and Scott had kept summoning his Keyblade and transforming into his werewolf form unwillingly, Stiles had suffered nightmares so powerful that he often couldn’t tell whether he was awake or not. He’d been abusing potions to stay awake by the time Derek returned to Beacon Hills, but Derek hadn’t had the chance to get him alone and talk to him about it.

That was because they’d taken a trip to New Orleans to visit the famous Tiana’s Palace for their renowned pastries and take their minds off everything that had happened. What they hadn’t known at the time was that Stiles’ journey to the Nemeton had left open a door in his mind, one that the Nogitsune, a fox-shaped, ancient Heartless that had been lurking in the shadows of the bayou, had strolled through.

It had been slow, but the Nogitsune had slowly possessed every part of Stiles, blotting out the light from his heart as he covered every inch of his mind in darkness.

Stiles had disappeared from his bed once in the middle of the night, and Rafael and Melissa McCall had found him near-death in the elephant graveyard on the Pride Lands, his powder blue Gummi ship abandoned near Pride Rock. They’d flown him back to the hospital in Beacon Hills, which had treated him and sent him back home with a clean bill of health. But the scans and tests hadn’t been able to show the true damage the possession had been wreaking on him, hadn’t been able to show exactly why he’d tried to passively kill himself.

He’d only grown more erratic after that, losing his ability to control his magic, losing his ability to read, and losing time to an alarming degree.

The pack had found out about the Nogitsune when the creature took Stiles over and tried to kill Scott, only to be stopped by Deaton’s magic and Stiles’ own will not to hurt his best friend.

Foiled, the Nogitsune had taken complete control of Stiles and disappeared, dropping off the radar of even the most dedicated law enforcement professionals, hunters, and supernatural creatures (among which Derek counted himself). They’d lost him between Hollow Bastion and Port Royal, only able to track him through the swath of devastation and destruction he cut through the worlds he visited.

The ancient fox Heartless had slaughtered an entire village in The Land of Dragons. Scott and Deaton had found Stiles’ unconscious form half-buried under a pile of bloodied snow and dirty bandages, so pale and cold they’d thought him dead.

He hasn’t been warm since.

They had destroyed the Nogitsune, Kira sliding her katana into it after Scott had bitten it, changing the host (a cryptic bit of advice from a page of Jiminy’s Journal, which they’d found stuffed into a dead man’s hollow finger).

The battles hadn’t come without cost. Aiden had died. And they’d lost Allison, even as her sacrifice helped them gain victory. Their most powerful Cure spells had had zero effect, because the Onis, a type of Heartless the Nogitsune controlled in that final battle, had weapons coated with a poison no antidote could touch. Not even the Phoenix Downs Scott rained down on his fallen pack members could bring them back to life.

Now, Scott was checking with Hercules to see if Allison was in Hades, perhaps drifting along the River Styx, but Derek had a feeling she was gone to somewhere they couldn’t reach. He didn’t begrudge the True Alpha the trip though; he’d made a similar one after he found out Laura had died in Beacon Hills. (She hadn’t let him check for their family after the fire, no matter how he’d pleaded with her to fly in that direction.) Kira, Lydia (and Malia, who Derek had yet to meet) had all gone with him, perhaps to provide support or gain closure of their own. Derek didn’t ask, and no one volunteered the information.

But that had left Stiles alone. Stiles, who was still always cold. Stiles, who still looked like he hadn’t slept through the night in months. Stiles, who looked like he was being crushed under the weight of his own guilt.

So Derek had hatched a scheme to make Stiles smile again.

Stiles had always loved flying (the novelty made him giggle every time), and he and Tinker Bell were fast friends. So Derek had loaded Stiles into his Gummi Ship and flew them to Neverland.

It’s only after Tinker Bell has shaken a liberal amount of pixie dust on them both as they stand on a dock that Derek realizes the hitch in his plan.

Namely, that you had to have a happy memory in mind to fly. And Stiles was anything but happy. And, from the look on his face, his inability to fly wasn’t lifting his spirits.

Derek glances over at Tinker Bell, who’s flitting frantically around, poking at the corners of Stiles’ lips to try to prop them up into a smile. Stiles is looking more and more defeated as time goes on, his too-thin frame disappearing into his red hoodie.

Derek unhooks his thumbs from the holes in the sleeves of his maroon pullover, rucking back the sleeves to his elbows.

“Do you want to go home?” Derek asks first, wanting to give Stiles the option.

Stiles shakes his head and crosses his arms, hunching forward.

“Okay,” Derek says. He holds out his left hand as Tinker Bell lands in the palm of his right.

Stiles hesitates before putting his right hand in Derek’s. The icy chill of his fingers in Derek’s palm is a shock. Derek quickly suppresses his reaction because he doesn’t want to discourage Stiles even more. Instead, he wraps his fingers more firmly around Stiles’, trying to chase the cold away.

“Happy thoughts,” Derek murmurs, and Stiles snorts derisively. The thing is, Derek had had to repeat that mantra over and over when he first tried to fly in Neverland. For a long time, happy thoughts were few and far between.

Stiles’ face scrunches up, and it’s obvious he’s trying, but he slumps down to the ground, sobbing out dry breaths after several minutes pass and he isn’t even a centimeter off the ground.

Derek keeps a grip on his hand and gracefully folds his legs together as he sits down beside Stiles. Tinker Bell leaps from Derek’s hand to flit over to Stiles, landing on his left knee. She flops down on the worn denim of his jeans, tucking her legs under the right side of her body in deference to her short green dress.

She makes a noise like the soft noises of a wind chime, and Derek hears, underneath that, her telling Stiles that he’ll be able to find a happy thought soon as she pats his knee with her tiny hand. Derek leaves offering verbal comfort to her as he shifts until he’s pressed his side to Stiles’ own.

He thinks about how to make Stiles happy, how to at least bring a smile to Stiles’ face as they sit there, breathing in the warm, salty air blowing in off the sea.

His mind turns over various memories, examining them for potential.

_Lydia bitching about how shoddily her body was stitched together in Halloweentown._

_Isaac smacking down Cruella de Vil in an argument about the fashion merits of scarves._

_Scott being mobbed by a puppy pile of Dalmatians (because he’d appeared as a wolf pup when they’d entered that same world)._

_Allison getting into a hyper-competitive archery competition with Princess Merida._

_The time Jackson turned into a guppy in Atlantica and nearly got eaten by a whale._

_Boyd and Erica going on a materia-stealing rampage with Yuffie Kisaragi just for kicks._

_He and Stiles and Scott flying together for the first time, soaring above Neverland and chasing one another amongst the clouds._

On that thought, Derek finds himself lifting off the ground.

Stiles snorts, but he sounds sad as he says, “Showoff.” Derek settles back onto the ground, embarrassed at his lack of control.

And then Derek thinks of the perfect happy thought for Stiles. One the entire pack had sworn an oath never to bring up again on pain of teeth being put into throats. One that involved Derek’s personal humiliation.

“Any luck?” Derek ventures, pointing at Stiles’ head.

Stiles sweeps a wild hand out in front of himself, almost knocking Tinker Bell from her perch as he yells “Do I look like I’m flying?”

Tinker Bell’s face turns bright red with anger and she flies up in Stiles’ face, shaking her tiny index finger at him. Stiles huffs before his own face turns red, although not the same crimson shade as Tink’s entire head.

“Would you slow down?” he demands of the fairy. “You know I can’t hear you like the wolves can when you get upset, alright? Do I need to break out the charades?”

Tinker Bell stamps her foot in mid-air before flying in close, flicking Stiles’ nose hard before coming in closer to give him a hug on the nose; the best she can accomplish with their size difference.

Stiles sighs, stroking the tip of his right index finger carefully down her back after almost poking himself in the eye.

“Thanks, Tink. I know you’re just trying to help.” She makes that shimmering chime noise again — Derek tries not to listen to her actual words — before fluttering back down to Stiles’ knee, straightening out the puffballs on her shoes as she sits again.

Derek looks at Stiles, looks at the deep circles under his eyes and the bittersweet expression on his face at receiving even a small bit of comfort, and sighs.

“Hey, Stiles?” Derek asks, resigning himself to being humiliated again. Stiles doesn’t look up from where he’s started toying with the strings of his hoodie.

“Yeah?”

“I think I know what memory you could use. To fly.”

“And what’s that?” Stiles asks, still not looking at him, but leaning subtlety (for Stiles anyway) into Derek’s side.

Derek takes a deep breath, then another.

 _‘You’re doing this for Stiles,’_ he reminds himself. _‘It’ll be worth it to see him smile, see him laugh again.’_

“You remember the time we went to Wonderland?”

Stiles’ head lifts a little.

“You mean the trip we don’t speak about?” Stile says, his lips curving up in the same manner Tinker Bell had been encouraging them to do earlier.

“Yes,” Derek says, gritting his teeth to keep them from turning into fangs. “That’s the one.”

“Could you describe it for me?” Stiles asks cheekily, and Derek almost snarls in annoyance, but then he see the pleading on Stiles’ face that he’s trying to hide under a cracking veneer of sarcasm and bravado. Stiles may be able to recall the memory in question perfectly, but Derek is pretty sure Stiles can’t see the humor in anything anymore. Which means he’ll have to detail it for him.

Derek sighs. He _hates_ having to detail things.

“The second we showed up in that world, the heart of it decided we didn’t match with the decor. Because sometimes the hearts are terrible and have awful senses of humor.

“Isaac ended up as a giant caterpillar. Lydia ended up as the Red Queen and Ethan and Aiden were her playing card foot soldiers. Scott was the White Rabbit and Kira and Allison just ended up in normal dresses, which they were pretty disappointed by. Although, because it’s them, Kira’s sword and Allison’s crossbow ended up being able to shoot into their own little pocket dimensions.

“And you were the Cheshire Cat. I’d turn around to ask you something and there’d just be your stupid grin. It freaked me out every time.”

“You love my grin,” Stiles says, his voice gaining strength from the low whisper it had been before. “And you?”

Derek digs the fingers of his free hand into the dock, the wood splintering under his claws. A phantom itch from those damn white stockings crawls up Derek’s legs and he has to flex and spread his toes in his boots to dispel the memory of the pinch from those wretched Mary Jane shoes.

“I somehow ended up in the same outfit as the resident Princess of Heart, Alice. That stupid little blue frock and that stupid white pinafore and that stupid freaking hair ribbon!”

Derek is so busy seething with remembered rage that he almost misses the soft snort Stiles lets out.

But even if he _had_ missed it, he would have noticed the way Stiles dissolves into giggles soon after, curling over himself and Tinker Bell as his body shakes with half-contained mirth.

Stiles starts wiping his eyes, which are filling with happy tears.

“Oh my god! Your face! Your face when you noticed! It was priceless, just priceless!”

Derek snarls before he abruptly loses his breath when he notices Stiles is floating a foot off the ground.

Tinker Bell notices it, too, clapping her hands in delight and shedding even more golden pixie dust onto Stiles.

“And the ribbon! It was just the perfect topper! You looked like a grumpy cupcake!”

Derek almost doesn’t want to point it out, but he keeps the image of Stiles laughing fixed firmly in his mind and floats his way up above him. He gestures for Tinker Bell to join him and she does, circling twice around his head before hovering by Derek’s left shoulder.

“Hey, Stiles,” he says.

Stiles is still laughing, and he’s pulled up the edge of his sweatshirt to wipe at the tears on his face.

“And the little apron bow! It was too precious for words!”

“Stiles.”

“The straps on your shoes! They were dainty, oh my god! The most dainty little things I’d ever seen on your big feet!”

“Stiles!”

At that, Stiles finally opens his eyes and looks around. When he finally sees Derek and Tinker Bell above him, and the ground several feet beneath him, he drops a foot through the air in shock.

“Whoa!” He starts scrabbling through the air, frog-kicking his way higher into the sky.

Derek laughs and swoops down, grabbing one of Stiles’ flailing hands and using it to pull Stiles up and to his chest, twirling him around in the sky like they’re doing some overly complicated waltz.

“You’re flying,” Derek says softly.

“I am,” Stiles replies, his long eyelashes brushing his flushed cheeks. He grins widely, elation in his voice as realization sets in and he repeats “I am! I’m totally flying right now! Hah!”

“I’m glad,” Derek says as he lets Stiles go, genuinely pleased to have been able to give Stiles something good.

Stiles pulls farther away from him to do somersaults, flips, twists, and some sort of short aerial ballet with Tinker Bell that involves a lot of pixie dust and giggling.

Panting, he flies back to Derek, circling around him in smaller and smaller loops until he’s hovering in front of him.

“This is awesome! I’m flying again! I didn’t think I’d _ever_ be happ…” he trails off, slowly drifting down through the sky.

“No, no, no,” Derek chants, diving down beneath the other man and sticking the toes of his boots beneath Stiles’ sneakers. He wraps his arms around Stiles’ waist. Stiles refuses to look at him or Tinker Bell, who keeps flying to the other side of his head as often as he turns his face away to avoid her gaze. “You were happy. You were _happy_ just now. I know you were. And you can be again, Stiles. If I can, after everything, you can, too. It’s just one happy thought at a time, one after the other.”

He pauses before he quietly adds, “That’s what Laura always used to tell me after the fire.”

Stiles looks at him then, amber eyes reflecting the moonlight in a way that almost makes them glow. The silvery light also serves to highlight the dark hollows underneath Stiles’ eyes. They’re fading, but they’re still far too apparent for Derek’s tastes. He imagines the whole pack feels that way (and it’s strange to have pack again, strange to have people older than him, like the Sheriff and Mrs. McCall, to rely on again).

“Yeah?” Stiles whispers as Tinker Bell comes to hover between them. “That’s…she was something, wasn’t she?”

Derek feels a pang as he thinks of Laura, but the image of her torn-apart body is tempered by an image of her smiling and teasing him as she passed him in the hall of their home. He likes to think that it’s personal growth that he stays perfectly level in the air; his sad thoughts balanced out by his happy ones.

“She really was.” He pulls one arm from Stiles’ waist to stick his hand in his pocket and finger the cerulean blue triskele keychain he took off Peter after he killed him (although Lydia and dark magic had reversed Peter’s death). It had been crimson then, a manifestation of alpha power (and the Keyblade it created was the same), but it had changed colors when he’d used it to power the Curaga spell he’d employed on a mistletoe-poisoned Cora.

It had been Laura’s though, and before that it had belonged to Talia, to his mother.

It still hurts to think of his family, to think of the flood of Heartless Kate had let loose on Beacon Hills even as she set fire to his family’s home after trapping them inside.

But he can think of the happier times now, too, of running through familiar and unfamiliar woods, of being the butt of embarrassing pranks, of sharing dinners with his family, his pack.

And he can remember those because anger isn’t his anchor anymore.

Stiles shifts a little, stepping off Derek’s toes to float on his own.

“One happy thought at a time, right?” He smiles weakly.

“Right,” Derek says, carefully letting Stiles move away from him like he’s letting fishing line play out into a stream. Stiles stops when his fingers are flush against Derek’s. “You may not be happy right away. That’s okay. But you shouldn’t feel bad when you do feel happy. The people who love you wouldn’t want that, whether they’re here or not.”

“Laura?”

“Deaton. Surprisingly. I’m still not convinced that man didn’t study under Yen Sid.”

Stiles smiles before he asks “So, what’s your happy thought?”

“You,” Derek says immediately, then promptly turns red with embarrassment. There’s the distinct sound of bells and Derek recognizes the tones enough to recognize that Tinker Bell is laughing at him. A glance to the side confirms she’s flopped down in mid-air, clutching her sides as she twists and rolls around.

When Derek chances a look at Stiles, he finds the younger man’s gaze is fixed on their footwear and there’s a definite pink hue to his cheeks.

“Really?” Stiles ask shyly, still not looking up.

Derek nods, even though Stiles isn’t watching him.

“My happy thought just became you laughing. Just now.” Stiles looks up at him then, pleased and a little bit shocked.

“I’m really your happy thought?” he asks, jaw working fretfully even after he asks the question.

Derek nods again and Stiles floats closer, looking surprised. Derek looks over Stiles’ shoulder and notices a small trail of pixie dust floating in a line directly behind him. He floats up a few inches so he can follow the line down to its origin. He finds Tinker Bell pushing Stiles forward. Noticing his gaze, the fairy winks at him before giving Stiles a monumental shove in his direction before zipping off to parts unknown.

“Yeah,” Derek says as she pulls Stiles firmly into his embrace, rolling his eyes at Tinker Bell even if she’s not around to see him do it. “You’re my happy thought.”

Stiles snickers. “I’m trying not to be smug about that, but I’m totally failing. I’m also super touched, FYI.”

He pulls back a little so he can snag Derek’s lips in a chaste kiss.

When they break apart, he says “You’re _my_ happy thought. Hair bow and all.”

Derek pulls him into another kiss, this one quick and filthy, before he shunts Stiles to the side.

Stiles looks affronted right up until the moment Derek says “Race?”

And then Stiles is grinning again. The expression is a shadow of its former incarnations, stripped of much of the vibrancy it once possessed, but it’s enough for Derek to stay afloat.

“You’re on,” Stiles says, and shoots across the star-filled sky, Derek right behind him.

 


End file.
